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Alan Joyce Spotted On Tarmac With Qantas Ground Crew
Before the airline asked its senior executives to work as baggage handlers in an internal email earlier this month, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was spotted on the tarmac in a high visibility jacket alongside ground staff. A passenger photographed the CEO standing beside a cart on the tarmac. The photo was taken before Qantas requested senior executives work in operations in a letter earlier this month. According to a Qantas spokesperson, the photo of Joyce is not new and was taken during a general visit to frontline teams, which the CEO regularly does. Joyce is believed to have been visiting teams on the ground to gather feedback on the airline’s operations rather than working as a baggage handler. Following the photo, Colin Hughes, the airline’s chief operating officer, sent an email to high-level staff stating that the company was looking for at least 100 managers to work in various airport roles for up to five days a week. Mr Hughes indicated that there was “no expectation that you will opt into this role on top of your full-time position,” but that it was a necessary action in response to increasing criticism of Qantas’ ability to handle passenger demand. ‘You’ll be an embedded resource within the ground handling partners during your time in the contingency programme,’ Mr Hughes wrote. ‘This means you’ll get a roster, be scheduled to operate and be supervised and managed by our grand handling partners in live operations.’ Executives would sort luggage, scan tags, and even drive luggage tugs on the tarmac as part of the programme. Under the extraordinary plan, managers would pack planes with people’s belongings and move cargo between flights. ‘It is our singular company focus to support our teams in getting our operation back on track and providing our passengers with the experience they expect from the airline,’ Mr Hughes wrote. Qantas stated that the ‘contingency plan’ was implemented in response to failing to meet customer expectations. ‘We’ve been clear that our operational performance has not been meeting our customers’ expectations or the standards that we expect of ourselves – and that we’ve been pulling out all the stops to improve our performance,’ said a spokeswoman for the company. ‘As we have done in the past during peak travel periods, around 200 head office staff have assisted at airports since Easter.
Qantas boss Alan Joyce plan to reopen Australian borders by 2022
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce is among many business leaders who have responded to the national cabinet’s four-phase pathway out of the pandemic announced on Friday to resume international travel eventually. When the four-phase plan was unveiled by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, did not have the timeframes, nor a commitment towards a magic vaccination number of Australians to reach to ensure international borders could safely reopen, basically it was a very vague plan. Qantas boss Alan Joyce says the number of Australians who are offered a vaccine, rather than how many people take it, should be the key to unlocking the country’s international borders. Mr Joyce said he agreed with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who said last week international borders should reopen once everyone had been offered the vaccine, irrespective of actual vaccination rates. “If the logic of Dan Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk applies, once we’ve got every adult who wants a vaccine to be vaccinated, then surely that should be the threshold,” Mr Joyce told The Australian. “I support that logic.” Mr Joyce said domestic and international borders should be reopened in 2022, if it was the case every Australian who wanted a vaccine would get one by the end of this year. “Most people should be vaccinated before the end of the calendar year,” he said. “Hopefully, they can meet that time frame.” Mr Joyce who had been looking at an October return of international flights, based on previous expectations the national rollout would be completed by then — also called for more clarity on when “this cycle of lockdowns and interruptions” would end. “We need some clear metrics to be able to chart our progress, so we know when we’re halfway or three-quarters of the way through each of the phases,” Mr Joyce told the Australian Financial Review. “I think that’s important psychologically as much as anything.” Other business leaders echoed Mr Joyce’s call for vaccine targets and clear metrics around Australia’s covid recovery. Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said businesses “have had enough of lockdowns” and “the thought of more lockdowns this winter quite frankly terrifies people”. Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott said states and territories needed to agree to “end the patchwork of restrictions” if vaccine targets were to work. “People are depending on the national cabinet to work together quickly to develop a realistic plan with achievable targets, based on the best health advice and in line with the supply of vaccine,” Ms Westacott told The Australian. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said last week the number of Australians who were offered the vaccine would be the “critical criteria” for a decision on borders. “I think everyone would feel comfortable if they knew that every single person in their family had been offered the opportunity for a vaccine,” she said. “So I think every eligible Australian should have the opportunity to have been offered a vaccine. What we are going to see in some countries is that some countries will get their population vaccinated and then they will open up.” Her view stands in contrast with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who last week set a target of 80% vaccination for her state to return to “covid normal”. “You need between 75 to 80% of the population to be vaccinated before you can start having conversations about what covid normal looks like – that is the target,” Ms Berejiklian said.
Qantas, Air New Zealand Benefit From Foreign Airlines Operation Constraints
The projections of Qantas and Air New Zealand are optimistic for at least the next 12 months. Executives from both airlines expect a healthy revenue environment as tourists return to countries in the southern hemisphere, citing lower international flight capacity into Australia and New Zealand. Throughout its fiscal year 2025, which ends in June 2025, Qantas, the larger of the two airlines, anticipates industry capacity in Australia to lag behind 2019 levels. In a meeting with analysts last week, Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce increased demand for overseas travel would lead to higher unit revenues (higher tickets). Joyce is “extremely optimistic” that Qantas’ international operations would return to profitability by the end of the current fiscal year in June 2023. Qantas predicts worldwide industrial capacity will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2025. By this time, Australia would have “had five years of growth in the economy since [2019], so that’s still undeserving the market,” Joyce said. Unit sales are strong because “there is much more demand than supply.” The situation is similar from Air New Zealand’s perspective, with high international demand and limited capacity, but they are less enthusiastic about its longevity. Based on internal predictions, Air New Zealand’s CFO Richard Thomson stated last Thursday that the company expects international industry capacity in New Zealand to remain constrained and below demand through at least the end of its current fiscal year, which also ends in June 2023. Compared to other markets across the world, “there is comparatively sort of little operators — other airline operators entering the New Zealand market,” Thomson added. Therefore, “the yield environment has been rather favourable.” To what end are timetables limited to Australia and New Zealand? Aircraft supplies stated top officials from both companies. New plane deliveries from Airbus and Boeing have been delayed due to problems in the supply chain. New Airbus A320neo family plane deliveries are affected, as are Boeing 787 widebodies, and the latter has a disproportionate impact on Qantas and Air New Zealand. Boeing was forced to suspend deliveries of new 787s for more than a year by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States because of production quality difficulties. The delivery of a brand new 787-8 to American Airlines marked the restart of deliveries earlier in August. Qantas has placed solid orders with Boeing for three 787-9s, but the airline does not anticipate delivery of the planes until the second quarter of 2023, according to Joyce. The airline’s ability to compensate for lost capacity when it decommissioned its Boeing 747s during the crisis has been hampered. Qantas’ Airbus A380s take a while to return to service because of the extensive maintenance and overhaul that each plane requires. Due to aircraft limits and blocked markets, particularly in China, Qantas expects to regain just 75% of its pre-pandemic international capacity during the 2023 fiscal year and 100% in 2024. In contrast, domestic Australian capacity in 2023 will be 101 percent of 2019. The 2024 capacity outlook is lifted by Qantas’ plans for a new thrice-weekly nonstop service between Auckland and New York JFK that will begin next June. Eight Boeing 787-10s have been ordered by Air New Zealand, although they won’t arrive until the fiscal year ends in June 2025. According to Thomson, the airline’s “current perspective of possible delivery dates” after conversations with Boeing puts the delay at one year. With the proposed MTOW increase, the 787s can fly nonstop between Auckland and Los Angeles with a full load and no weight restrictions. During the fiscal year ending in June, Air New Zealand expects to operate between 75% and 80% of its pre-Covid system capacity. Long-haul international capacity will be roughly 65-70 percent of where it was three years ago, while domestic capacity will approach 2019 levels. Air New Zealand will offer new flights between Auckland and New York starting on 17 September. Many Asian airlines still can’t reach Australia and New Zealand due to Covid travel restrictions. Cathay Pacific Airways and other mainland Chinese airlines are now scarcely airborne. In 2019, Singapore Airlines carried more international passengers to Australia than any other airline. However, the company currently operates at only 75% of its pre-crisis seat capacity. Qantas and Air New Zealand are so confident about the future that it’s easy to forget they both lost money in the fiscal year that ended in June. After reporting a profit of $281 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA), Qantas disclosed an underlying loss before taxes of $1.86 billion for the quarter. Total revenues of A$9.1 billion were down 49 percent from the prior three years. Over the same period, unit sales increased by 7%, but unit costs increased by nearly 44% (excluding fuel and depreciation). According to the airline’s financial statements for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2022, Air New Zealand lost NZ$810 million before taxes. Compared to the previous three-year period, annual sales dropped 53%, to NZ$2.7 billion. Nearly 29 percent more money was made per unit, whereas expenditures rose by 31 percent when fuel was excluded.
Qantas, Air New Zealand report unprecedented losses
Qantas Airways and Air New Zealand, the two largest South Pacific carriers, have reported disappointing earnings for the full year of 2020. Large drops in passenger volume, primarily due to ongoing travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, have resulted in losses for both airlines. Qantas recently announced that it hopes to fly internationally by December, while Air New Zealand says that due to the COVID-19 surge, it will be some time before borders open. Last week, both airlines reported full-year losses as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across Australia and now New Zealand. Qantas reported an annual loss of A$1.73 billion, while Air New Zealand reported a nett loss of NZ$289 million (US$202 million) for the fiscal year. “During the half, we saw the second wave in Victoria and the strictest domestic travel restrictions since the pandemic began. Virtually all of our international flying and 70 percent of domestic flying stopped, and with it went three-quarters of our revenue,” states Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas. In announcing its results, Qantas stated that it planned to bring back five of its 12 Airbus A380 superjumbos from mid-2022 to fly to the United States and the United Kingdom, a year earlier than previously anticipated. The airline said it is a positive sign for travel in the Asia-Pacific region, where borders are mostly closed and international travel is 95 percent lower than it was before COVID, though the Qantas plan is subject to government approval and could be delayed. Qantas said it expected flights to countries with high vaccine rates, such as Singapore, Japan, the United States, Britain, and hopefully New Zealand, to resume in mid-December, pending government decisions. The statutory loss of A$1.73 billion, including impairments and restructuring charges, was less than the previous year's loss of A$1.96 billion. The airline reported A$3.8 billion in liquidity as of June 30, a decrease of A$200 million from the previous month. “One of the biggest unknowns is the quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated travellers entering Australia,” Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce said. “If it’s 14 days in a hotel, demand levels will be very low. A shorter period with additional testing and the option to isolate at home will see a lot more people travel. Because of the nature of COVID, we've already had to change our plans a few times. We can't rule out the possibility of having to relocate them again. I understand that the prospect of flying overseas may seem distant, especially with New South Wales and Victoria under lockdown. Some may argue that we are still overly optimistic. However, at the current rate of vaccination rollout, all Australian states are on track to meet the 80% target by December – the trigger for cautiously opening to some parts of the world. That means a lot of work needs to get started right away. Meanwhile, Air New Zealand reported an after-tax loss of NZ$289 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, its first full-year result under COVID-19. The national carrier lost $454 million in 2020, its first annual loss in 18 years. To assist it in surviving the pandemic The government, which owns 52 percent of Air New Zealand, has advanced NZ$350 million of a NZ$1.5 billion loan to the airline. It plans to draw down even more in the coming months. Air New Zealand received approximately NZ$450 million in government assistance, including airfreight support schemes, in the fiscal year 2021. Border restrictions resulted in a 48% drop in revenue to NZ$2.5 billion and a 55% drop in capacity over the previous year. Revenue from cargo increased by 71% to NZ$769 million. Given the current national lockdown, ongoing international travel restrictions, and uncertainty about the level of demand once these restrictions are lifted, Air New Zealand has suspended its 2022 earnings guidance. Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran said the 2021 fiscal year was one in which the airline played the hand it was dealt, kept planes flying every day, and took some important steps towards implementing its refreshed strategy.
Qantas Boss Compared WA Border Restrictions To North Korea
Qantas boss Alan Joyce has compared Western Australia’s ongoing border shutdown to North Korea’s authoritarian regime. Joyce said on Friday, “There isn’t even a plan to open up.” At this point, it will remain closed indefinitely until we have a strategy for living with COVID and opening up the entire country. He told Melbourne’s 3AW radio station that many Australians should be “outraged” that they can fly to London but not to Perth. “You can’t even travel around your own country … it’s starting to look like North Korea,” he told presenters Ross and Russel. “We thought we had a date for that border to be opened … but that was stepped back from; it’s disappointed tens of thousands of people that had booked to go to WA. “I think we should all be a bit outraged by it … we’re supposed to be all Australians.” He added more broadly that he would like to see tourists allowed back into Australia as soon as possible because the current rules were causing “much damage” to the tourism industry. “There’s talk about maybe pressure on the hospital system here, but when you look at the detail of it, we have higher per capita cases of COVID than a lot of these countries – the UK, the US.” Australia is currently only open to skilled migrants, students and working-holiday backpackers. North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is commonly regarded as having the world’s worst human rights record and has been frequently condemned by the United Nations, the European Union, and Human Rights Watch. It comes only days after the state’s premier, Mark McGowan, refused to say when he would open up, warning of the possibility of new COVID outbreaks. WA was supposed to lift its harsh border controls on February 5th, but that decision was reversed. The closing of WA is a double blow for Qantas because Perth is the traditional home of its iconic kangaroo flights to London, which have now been redirected to Darwin. The airline hoped to launch a new route from Sydney and Melbourne to Rome via Perth in June. Since the pandemic’s start, Qantas has had a troubled relationship with Perth and Western Australia, implying that it may lose its exclusive place as a transit hub for flights to the UK in the long run. According to Joyce, when McGowan decided to keep the borders closed to interstate travellers, Qantas lost “millions of dollars” in flight cancellations. “When you look at the detail of it, we have higher per capita cases of Covid than a lot of these countries … the UK, the US, most European countries,” he said. “We ask people to be fully vaccinated, so they’re less likely to end up in hospital … I don’t get the logic, and I think we should be opening up the borders … as soon as possible.” Although the country’s international border is open to residents and some visa holders like students and skilled migrants, tourists and business travellers from most countries are still denied entry. International students have arrived in Australia in large numbers, and more than 50,000 visa applications have been submitted since late November. Visas for Working Holiday Makers have been granted to around 28,000 people since the border was reopened to some travellers, with arrivals increasing by 17% in the last week. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said that he wants the international border to be fully open “far before” Easter this year. The tourism industry, according to Joyce, has suffered significantly because of the closures. Earlier this week, Perth Airport announced that terminal 1 would be closed beginning Monday due to low passenger numbers. There will be a relocation to terminal 2 for all Virgin services. Business leaders, including Qantas chairman Richard Goyder, are relocating to the east coast due to the border closure. 91.77% of Western Australians have received two doses of the vaccine, while 838,933 people had a booster shot as well. On Friday, the state reported no new cases of community transmission, and two new cases were discovered in hotel quarantine. Source: The Guardian
Qantas CEO reveals WA Premier promise on Perth to London flight restart
Premier Mark McGowan promised Qantas head Alan Joyce that the Perth-to-London flight would return. After the first international flight from Melbourne departed on Monday morning, Mr Joyce told Sunrise that the two discussed the route during the Telethon auction in September. Due to WA’s decision to close its international borders, the flight has been put on hold. In October, Qantas relocated its flight hub from Perth to Darwin after the Western Australian government indicated that international air travel would not be available until next year. In early November, the first flight from Darwin to London started. Mr Joyce, on the other hand, explained how Mr McGowan had committed to allowing the flights to resume in 2022. Despite the lack of a specific return date, Mr Joyce indicated that if vaccination rates in WA approach 90%, the flights might resume in as little as a few months. When tickets for the Perth to London trip went up for auction during the Telethon event, he said he brought up the issue with the Premier. As a backup plan, “we fly them to Karratha because that’s the closest physically you can get to London, and there is a good English pub where they can serve you a warm beer,” he said, referring to the Karratha English Pub. According to Sunrise, by the middle of next year, flights to Bali and the United States could be available.
Keen traveller snaps up dozens of flights in one day
One keen traveller evidently driven stir crazy by the pandemic purchased a staggering quantity of flights in just 24 hours, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has revealed. He told the airline’s annual general meeting on Friday that travel demand was surging back, with consumers who stockpiled their frequent flyers points acquired at supermarkets and banks during the health crisis coming out “in force as we’ve added new flights”. The national carrier scored its most significant day for flight redemptions in October after it announced the most important single release of new Classic Flight Reward seats throughout its international and domestic network, with more than half a billion points spent on 15,000 seats in 24 hours. “Some very clever customers booked 38 tickets in that period of time – obviously extremely keen to fly post-Covid,” Mr Joyce said. When Qantas said earlier this year that it planned to resume international flights in December, he said that “it appeared excessively optimistic to some. “But it’s happening faster than any of us predicted because Australians have turned out in droves to be vaccinated,” he said. Demand for seats on the London to Sydney service, in particular, had been solid, with Aussies travelling home in time for Christmas and more flights added as a result”. He said that the first A380 to arrive from Dresden was sooner than planned, indicating that the airline’s flagship aircraft will be returning to service soon. NSW lifting quarantine rules had brought back 11,000 personnel, with Qantas anticipating to return to flying at roughly 100 per cent of its pre-Covid domestic schedule in December or January, while international operations would steadily ramp up. Just a few overseas flights have got off the ground in the past several days, chairman Richard Goyder said, and both executives cautioned the resumption would be “bumpy”. Mr Joyce said all onshore personnel were able to return to work early next month. “Combined with operational and corporate workers already working, all 22,000 employees are expected to be back working, which wasn’t projected to happen until June next year,” he said. It’s controversial outsourcing of ground employees was a difficult decision to be made, Mr Joyce added. Mr Goyder said the airline luckily expected “no need for further large-scale employment cuts”. However, he had no good news for roughly 2000 eliminated baggage handlers, ramp workers and cabin cleaners, who lost their jobs to outsourcing and appealed the move through the Transport Workers Union in the Federal Court. In July, the union won, but Qantas is pushing forwards with an appeal to be heard early next year. Mr Goyder said the airline “fundamentally” disagreed with the verdict and was driven “only by permissible commercial considerations, including saving $100m a year in the middle of a global pandemic”. As a result, “we avoided spending $80 million on equipment over the next five years and now better align resources with varying levels of demand.” He said it had not been a foregone certainty that Qantas would withstand Covid-19, which would likely have lost the business more than $20bn in revenue by the end of the current calendar year. “It’s a staggering number,” Mr Goyder added.
Qantas to order more than 100 new jets to replace domestic fleet
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce announced a multi-billion-dollar order for over 100 new aircraft to replace its ageing domestic fleet and new long-haul aircraft to fly nonstop to London and New York. The Morrison government announced that vaccinated Australians will be allowed to stay at home for seven days rather than spend two weeks in hotel quarantine. Those returning home or visiting family may tolerate home quarantine, but business and tourist travellers would not. "We need to move quickly away from the seven days [quarantine]," he said during a press conference on the sidelines of the IATA annual meeting in Boston. Mr Joyce said that once vaccination targets were met, lockdown restrictions were lifted, and COVID-19 was allowed to circulate, vaccinated UK and US travellers were no more at risk than anyone else. "Then it may be a testing regime - test and release- which is what a lot of countries are doing at the moment," he said. On Tuesday, IATA director general Willie Walsh said global travel restrictions were a "complex and confusing web of rules with little consistency". The global airline industry body said unvaccinated travellers should travel as long as they test negative for COVID before departure. Mr Walsh added that passenger testing data showed travellers were not putting the local population at risk, with 42,000 out of 3 million arrivals testing positive between February and August. Mr Joyce also revealed some of the rules for passengers entering and leaving Australia when the border opens in November, with NSW leading the way, followed by other states as they reach the 80% vaccination target. Passengers will use a smartphone app to demonstrate that they have been vaccinated and have returned a negative COVID-19 test before departure. At the same time, inbound travellers will perform two additional tests during their seven-day home quarantine. Mr Joyce also confirmed on Tuesday that the airline was nearing the end of a tender process with aircraft manufacturers to replace its domestic jets, which included 75 Boeing 737-800s and 20 Boeing 717s. The new planes will be delivered between 2023 and 2034. Analysts previously estimated that the airline's order would be worth around $5 billion. Airbus's A320 family of aircraft and Boeing's 737 MAX family have the same capacity as Qantas' 174-seat 737s; and smaller (100 to 150 seat) Airbus A220 and Embraer E-Jet E2 family jets to replace its 110 to 125 seat 717s. Following design changes to a flight control system linked to two fatal crashes in early 2019, which resulted in the jets being grounded worldwide until December 2020, aviation regulators have deemed Boeing's 737 MAX aircraft safe to fly. Mr Joyce also stated that the airline will relaunch plans to purchase a new fleet of Airbus A350-1000s to fly nonstop between London and New York within four years. "We were very close to ordering the aircraft just before COVID, so it's great the company is now looking to its future in the decades ahead," he said. Mr Joyce stated that the decision to completely renew Qantas' domestic fleet was a "once in a generation" decision. With the global aviation industry still in disarray due to the pandemic, he said the airline was in a unique position to negotiate steep discounts on new jets with aircraft manufacturers. "The domestic market is the big part of Qantas' profit pool; it is where most people will experience Qantas, so getting the fleet right domestically is of utmost importance," he said.
Qantas reaffirms airline will ban unvaccinated travellers
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has reiterated that unvaccinated passengers will be barred from international flights when borders reopen, which he hopes will be in December. Mr Joyce told the Trans-Tasman Business Circle in the latest of a series on vaccinations that the airline would implement a policy requiring proof of vaccination before flying. "Qantas will have a policy that internationally we'll only be carrying vaccinated passengers," he said. "Because we think that's going to be one of the requirements to show that you're flying safe and getting into those countries. We're hoping that can happen by Christmas." Last year, before Australia's vaccine rollout, began, Mr Joyce warned that passengers would need to be vaccinated to board international flights. The airline announced last month that vaccinations would be made mandatory for its 22,000 employees, citing a staff survey that found overwhelming support for vaccines. Qantas and Jetstar will require all frontline employees to be double vaccinated by November 15, and all office employees to be double vaccinated by the end of March. Exemptions for medical reasons will be granted. "We think everybody should be protecting themselves, but we also have a requirement to protect our colleagues and our passengers. And then there's also a requirement to protect the community," Mr Joyce said, citing the example of Longreach in outback Queensland, which put 100 residents into isolation after a COVID-19-positive cabin crew member flew there. Qantas launched a vaccination incentive programme, offering fully vaccinated frequent flyer programme members a choice of 1000 frequent flyer points, 15 status credits, or a $20 flight discount voucher (for use with Qantas or Jetstar). Mr Joyce stated that 300,000 people had already claimed their reward, with 75% opting for the 1000 frequent flyer points. He stated that the airline had already distributed 220 million points. Virgin Australia has also launched a vaccine incentive competition with a grand prize of 1 million frequent flyer points. Within a day of the competition's launch, the airline reported that 100,000 people had entered. Virgin has also made mandatory vaccinations for its employees. Mr Joyce stated that borders should be opened once 80% of the population has been vaccinated and that international travel to other highly vaccinated countries such as the UK, US, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and Fiji should resume. "We'll probably try a lot of new routes internationally, and as certain borders will open up and others won't," he said though he didn't indicate which routes these might be. He said Australians needed to be able to start travelling again by Christmas. "The population needs it. I think people want to connect; people want to see family again. People want to do business again. There's a lot of very important reasons why we should start opening up when we meet those key targets on the vaccination plan," he said. The federal government has announced the creation of a vaccine passport to allow Australians to prove their vaccination status when travelling abroad. He did, however, take a jab at the governments of Queensland and Western Australia, which have indicated that they may deviate from the national plan for reopening. "Unfortunately, I think there are one or two states that are taking a more conservative view on that and departing from the national plan. We might get into a situation where from Sydney you can visit your relatives in London, maybe Dublin, but you can't visit your relatives in Perth, or maybe Cairns. "That'd be sad if we got to that, and hopefully we get everybody to keep to the national plan, the national cabinet plan, which is everybody can get together at Christmas domestically and internationally." The airline revealed it has seen searches for international flights triple since it announced plans for restarting international flights, with the most popular routes to London, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Tokyo. Source: Traveller
Qantas CEO calls for international borders reopening this year
Alan Joyce celebrates the launch of the Beijing route Qantas boss Alan Joyce says Australia's vaccine rollout feels like it's moving slower than it should and higher rates of take-up may allow borders to open by the end of the year. Mr Joyce called for extra effort to encourage COVID-19 jabs while discussing Thursday's news of voluntary redundancy for Qantas international cabin crew and a two-year wage freeze for employees. The airline boss said authorities had done a great job keeping Australians safe during the pandemic, "imagine if we put the same focus on the vaccine rollout," Mr Joyce told a media conference, "opening by the end of the year seems very achievable under those circumstances." The Morrison government has been reluctant to give a timeframe for vaccinations, whilst budget papers use a mid-2022 re-opening timeframe, but there are no guarantees. Some business leaders and those with loved ones overseas say vaccine delivery should be hastened to open the borders earlier. Mr Joyce had a similar view. "We need to make sure we encourage as many people as possible to take the vaccine and make sure we don't get to a stage of dosage wastage," he said. The rollout "feels like it's slower than it should be", he said. "There is a lot more work to do on vaccinations to complete the program by the end of the year." More than 3.2 million Australians have now received a COVID-19 vaccination, with the daily pace of the rollout increasing as the program expands. Meanwhile, Mr Joyce declined to say how much money the group would save from its pay freeze. Qantas has forecast a statutory loss of more than $2 million before tax this financial year as international travel remains scarce due to the coronavirus. "When a company loses $4.7 billion over two years, I don't think anybody should be thinking management or employees should be getting a pay increase," Mr Joyce said. The redundancy offer is for long-haul international cabin crew and does not apply to pilots, the group has also reduced travel agents commission for overseas bookings. The commission will drop from five per cent to one per cent and take effect mid-next year. Mr Joyce said this sort of reduction had happened in other parts of the world. Encouragingly for the airline, Australians are flying domestically at near pre-COVID levels. Customers flying Qantas' trans-Tasman routes were at 60 per cent of pre-COVID levels. Australians and New Zealanders have been able to travel between the two nations without quarantine for about four weeks. Australians have been keen to travel to New Zealand. Many have gone skiing to Queenstown while popular skiing destinations in Japan remain off-limits. Mr Joyce said Kiwis were reluctant to visit Australia. New Zealand has had some of the most strict COVID-19 lockdowns in the world. Domestic travel has helped Qantas forecast underlying earnings of between $400 million and $450 million this financial year. Mr Joyce said Qantas had started to repay some of the debt it took on to help the company get through the pandemic. "We have a long way still to go in this recovery but it does feel like we're slowly starting to turn the corner," he said. "We've adjusted our expectations for when international borders will start opening based on the government's new timeline. "But our fundamental assumption remains the same - that once the national vaccine rollout is effectively complete, Australia can and should open up." The airline forecast a total revenue loss of $16 billion by the end of fiscal 2021. Despite this, Moody's Investors Service vice president Ian Chitterer was impressed by efforts to repay debt. He said he expected Qantas to emerge from the pandemic with a bigger share of the domestic market.
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